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Yar, you be here: Coming Home > Customer Reviews Coming Home Customer Reviews (16 - 18 of 21 Reviews)A Great Film about the Affects of War!
After a long wait, the Academy Award winning classic "Coming Home" has finally been released to DVD. It is an emotionally powerful drama, which explores how the Vietnam war affected our country and those who fought in it. This is a war movie that never lets us see the actual battlefield, yet shows us how it can break both the body and the spirit.Actress Jane Fonda plays Sally Hyde. She is a traditional military wife who sees her husband Bob (played by Bruce Dern) enthusiastically go off to the Vietnam War. To fill her time, Sally gets a volunteer job in the local VA hospital helping returning wounded soldiers.It is there that she meets and eventually falls in love with Luke (played by John Voight) an embittered paraplegic. The film shows us how these two individuals grow and change as people, against the turbulant background of the 1960s.Eventually Sally's Husband returns wounded from the war. His physical wound is superficial, but he is a spiritially broken, shell of a man.By the end of the film, these three people must deal in their own ways with the emotional carnage, that the war has brought upon their lives.This is among one of my favorite movies.It is not very often, that one finds such a perfect mixture of direction, screen writing, and acting to produce such a moving film.The late director, Hal Ashby,(who also made "Shampoo", "Harold & Maude" and "Being There") could have made a political diatrabe about Vietnam. Instead he chose to use the context of a love story to put across his point and to get us emotionally envolved with the subject of war and it's affects.Jane Fonda and John Voight are suberb as the two conflicted lovers.Their Academy Award winning, performances are probably the best of both their careers.Bruce Dern also gives a wonderful, yet scary performance as a man who no longer understands where he belongs in life.A special mention should be made about this movie's soundtrack.There are very few instances that I can think of where a film so successfully uses popular music (Rolling Stones, Beatles, Richie Havens, Simon & Garfunkle etc.) to not only create atmosphere and setting, but to also propel the actions and emotions of the movie. This is masterfully done at the emotional climax of the film with the use of folk singer, Tim Buckley's mournful rendition of "Once I Was".The lyrics and music tell the whole story of that movie. Never have I seen such perfection of music and image put together.Kudos for Hal Ashby and film editor, Don Zimmerman's work!The DVD version of this movie includes the trailer and two short documentries. It also has an excellent commentary soundtrack that includes cinematograher, Haskel Wexler and actors John Voight and Bruce Dern.It's too bad we don't get to hear Jane Fonda's thoughts and remembrances of the movie.Get this film on DVD! I think it is a film experience that will genuinely move most movie fans! An important film.
This film, the "other" 1978 movie about the Vietnam War, "Coming Home" takes a different approach than Michael Cimino's stark, shocking, "The Deer Hunter", which won a Best Picture Oscar. Cimino used a power approach to deliver his message, drumming the filmgoer with sounds and images. Hal Ashby's "Coming Home" uses a more subdued, character approach to explore the real price of the Vietnam War. I'm not so sure I'd agree that either Jon Voight (Academy Award-Best Actor) or Jane Fonda (Academy Award-Best Actress) is exemplary (they both won Academy Awards) but I think they are both very good. The bottom line is that this was an important movie, at a critical time, and the subject matter and its presentation really hit home. This is a film that is impossible to ignore, in 1978, or today, no matter what your political or social sensibilities may be. The language, the attitudes of all the characters is open, honest, frank. At the time this film was made, that was indeed breakthrough, for this subject matter, paramount. An absolute must see.
All the actors are great, including the supporting roles of Bruce Dern as the husband and Penelope Milford as Fonda's friend whose psychotic brother commits suicide. No wonder the film was nominated for eight academy awards in 1979 with those coveted statues going to Fonda and Voight as well as a trio of writers for the screenplay. I applaud the entire production though because it never slipped into maudlin sentimentality. Instead it was a real story the way the Vietnam War affected us all; it was easy to relate to it. The scenes in the veterans' hospital are particularly upsetting as we watch these young men gradually learn to live with their broken bodies. The audience is not spared the actualities of their care and of their suffering. However, as the film moves on, we get to know the Jon Voight character and the romantic scene between him and Fonda plays as bittersweet reality. Years have now past since the Vietnam War, but this film brings it all back. And it does this without one scene being placed in Vietnam itself. A fine film. Recommended.
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